The Fight

by Todd Abrams

I can't say precisely why I needed to bloody some other kid's face once and for all. I asked a friend who often engaged in violent matters how to achieve this end. Go and hit somebody, he said. My courage and drunkenness at last met outside a gas station where a smallish boy I knew from school was closing for the night. I howled and tore at the door like a mad animal and when the frightened kid finally emerged all that I could muster was the most ineffectual punch any young man with an arm ever threw. It has been happening this way all of my life.